HostGator VS 1and1 – Which Is Better for Personal Demand

HostGator and 1and1 are 2 famous web hosting providers in the market. As both of them offer reliable and affordable hosting service, choosing between the 2 might be a chore. In this article, we’d like to compare the 2 web hosts based on real customer feedbacks and our in-depth review concerning about price, features, uptime, speed, and technical support. Thus, our readers can have a clear understanding of the web hosting offered by the 2 companies, and make the right decision on their own.

We have collected hundreds of feedbacks from their verified customers, and have analyzed customer satisfaction level carefully. According to the result, HostGator is more preferred than 1and1, especially in respect to features, speed and support service.

Price Comparison – 1and1 Wins

As compared with many other web hosting solutions available on the web, both HostGator and 1and1 offer affordable hosting service with beneficial discount. If we have to pick the cheaper one, 1and1 wins little over HostGator. Check the detailed price comparison table in the following.

Price

HostGator

1and1

Regular

$6.95/mo

$7.99/mo

Discounted Price

$4.86/mo

$0.99/mo

Money Back

45 Days

30 Days

HostGator has 3 web hosting packages named as Hatchling, Baby, and Business. Regularly, they have been priced starting at $6.95/mo, $9.95/mo, and $16.95/mo respectively. With the exclusive coupon code EUNGE30OFF, however, the price is down to $4.86/mo, $6.96/mo, and $10.46/mo effectively.

HostGator Coupon Code Activation

1and1 also offers 3 plans as Unlimited, Unlimited Plus, and Unlimited Pro, which have been priced at $7.99/mo, $9.99/mo, and $14.99/mo initially. But now, it offers special discount that allows customers to purchase starting at $0.99/mo only.

You need to know that 1and1 only offers extreme low prices for the first month. After the initial one month, you have to pay them at the prices of $7.99/mo, $9.99/mo and $14.99/mo. To be honest, these plans are expensive compared with the average level in the market.

Both of the 2 web hosts provide the money back to ensure risk-free and worry-free purchase, but the full refund period of HostGator is 14 days longer than that of 1and1.

Feature Comparison – HostGator Wins

The two companies design their hosting plans to satisfy different demanders, and no matter you are a business owner or an individual blogger, you can choose the right one in a single company.

As both HostGator and 1and1 offer multiple web hosting options, we only compare their cheapest packages in this part. After all, budget is the top priority for the majority of web masters. In fact, both HostGator Hatchling plan and 1and1 Unlimited plan only allow 1 website on 1 account, but the Hatchling is much more rich-featured than the Basic.

Besides, unlike HostGator that provides the most powerful and popular cPanel control panel, 1and1 offers a custom one, which is not as user-friendly as cPanel. For experienced webmasters, they may have got used to cPanel, and if they turn to a custom control panel, they have to spend more time to master it. Besides, some 1and1 users reflect that its custom control panel is not that user-friendly as it claims.

Hosting Performance Comparison – HostGator Wins

As both of the 2 companies claim to guarantee at least 99.9% uptime and fast speed, we have carried out a performance testing for almost 6 months to test their reliability and speed in the real world. Note that the 2 tested websites are newly-launched ones, coming with the same content and script.

According to the result, only HostGator has fully kept its promise to achieve an almost 100% uptime, as well as a fast server response time of 330ms on average, over 100% faster than that of 1and1.

In fact, the reason why can HostGator guarantee such an excellent hosting performance is its utilization of quality web servers and world-class data centers. The servers are DELL branded, which are 100% factory built and tested. Besides, the data centers feature UPS, HVAC climate control, fire prevention system, and 24/7 monitoring. Besides, HostGator utilizes a fully meshed and redundant Certified Cisco Network to ensure the most stable and fastest connection.

Free Add-ons Comparison – HostGator Wins

In addition to the most basic hosting features as we have mentioned previously, both of these two web hosts also offer some free add-ons that can achieve the great hosting experience for you. HostGator, in particular, provides a long list of free extras as we have mentioned as below.

The 45 days money back guarantee is available so that you can be worry-free when signing up with this hosting company.

The Weebly Site Builder and some other website building tools are included into the packages, with which you can easily set up your site coming with different sizes and types.

The $100 advertising credit for Google AdWords is added into your AdWords account once you have already spent $25 on the Google Advertising.

The $100 advertising voucher for Yahoo/Bing Network Ads is also available.

HostGator supports more than 50 free scripts that can be installed on your hosting account via a few simple clicks, with which you can start a website and manage the site contents effortlessly.

There are a lot of transfer services for free, which include the MySQL database transfer, domain name transfer, website transfer and the script transfer.

There are around 4,500 website themes offered for the web hosting customers without any charge. You can find your preferred themes by filtering based on the template category, theme designer and the template type.

This hosting provider ensures the well optimized hosting environment to run WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla and many other popular applications properly.

HostGator offers a lot of email features, such as the SpamAssassin to prevent email spam, unlimited POP3 accounts along with SMTP, IMAP support and many more.

Even, HostGator is the green web hosting that has invested a lot in wind energy to offset their server carbon emissions.

As compared with HostGator, 1and1 is less competitive that only offers the free domain, auto application installation and the shared SSL certificate.

Technical Support Comparison – HostGator Wins

To be honest, the technical support offered by 1and1 is a little bit disappointing. Customers can contact support staffs only via e-mail and hotline. And the lack of live chat causes great inconvenience to non-English speakers. Besides, this web host claims to offer 24/7 customer service, but the phone support is not available during some national holidays.

HostGator, however, really has done a good job in this respect, offering responsive technical support with a group of professional and well-trained support staffs, which allows customers to get their problems resolved perfectly 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week, even during the Christmas Eve. In addition, the support channels are various, including toll-free phone call, e-mail, ticket system, live chat, and user forum.

Summary

Without doubt, HostGator is the better web hosting provider than 1and1, for it offers a higher price value, better uptime track record, faster hosting speed, and more helpful technical support. Therefore, for anyone wishing to set up a website or blog with a reliable web host, HostGator is absolutely worth to go.

I've been an experienced web developer, SEOer and technical writer since 2003. I worked in many international high-tech companies including Microsoft and Autodesk before 2012. Now I own a startup company in San Francisco, CA, focusing on developing websites and blogs to deliver exceptional results to global readers by leveraging the power of Internet.
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FTC Disclosure

We get commission from web hosting companies for referral and advertisement. However, this does not affect our unbiased web hosting reviews and insights. We never allow payments to influence our judgement. We always work hard and try our best to help people find the best cost effective web hosting deals at an affordable rate.